Weird Science ponders the sexism inherent in its favored breast size

Breasts, puberty, mating pheromones, and a very weird Y chromosome also feature.

Solving the big unknown: just what breast size do men prefer. This was something I wouldn't have predicted: "Previous studies of men’s breast size preferences have yielded equivocal findings." Thankfully, science is here to bring some clarity to this deep mystery about shallow thoughts. Or not, given that the researchers only surveyed white Londoners. At least in that group, medium breasts come out on top, as it were. Although, combined, the fans of "large" and "very large" categories added up to an even greater percentage of the survey population.

But wait, there's more! While they had the males' attention, they also surveyed attitudes towards women. "Further analyses showed that men’s preferences for larger female breasts were significantly associated with a greater tendency to be benevolently sexist, to objectify women, and to be hostile towards women." So, perhaps the confused results from previous studies were the product of having survey populations with varying degrees of sexism.

Pay for a genetic test, rewrite human evolution. Typically, the most unexpected thing you can discover via genetic testing is that you're not related to one of your parents. Someone who sent his DNA into a commercial ancestry service, however, got a rather larger surprise: his Y chromosome wasn't related to anybody else's. At least, anybody we knew about at the time.

Until the appearance of this Y chromosome, human evolution had been a situation where everything lined up nicely. Fossil evidence suggests modern humans appeared on the scene less than 200,000 years ago, and the sequence of mitochondrial DNA (inherited only via mothers) placed its origin at 150,000-250,000 years ago. The Y, which is inherited only from fathers, was in roughly the same age range, although it seemed a bit younger, suggesting some lineages may have died out. But the DNA sample sent in by an African-American male didn't line up with existing sequences; instead it looked much older. In fact, it's dragged the entire Y lineage back to 340 thousand years old—older than modern humans themselves.

Similar Y chromosomes have now been found in Central Africa—though not, intriguingly, in the genetically oldest African populations. Possible explanations include having early modern populations that were isolated from each other, and mating with yet another pre-modern human population. We just don't know at this point.

As if they didn't have enough to worry about. Back to the UK for this one. We've apparently known for a while that disabilities are correlated with workplace violence and aggression, but the assumption was that the aggression contributed to disabilities. Now, however, a survey reveals that people are just bastards, and heap abuse (both verbal and physical) on disabled employees with much higher frequencies than they abuse other workers. Or at least the British do. We could use a cross-cultural survey of jack-assery.

And here we thought puberty makes kids stupid. But, apparently, puberty is a time when lots of new neurons are being born, suggesting it might provide a sort of mental boost. So, some researchers checked in rodents, looking to see whether these neurons linked into functional brain circuits and, if so, where. The neurons were, in fact, functional but were generally "activated during sociosexual behavior." I guess we can conclude that puberty puts sex on the brain. At least in hamsters, where the work was done.

You smell like you'd be a lousy parent. Inbred individuals tend to have reduced fertility compared to their peers, so it's going to be advantageous to avoid mating with one. But how do you figure out if a potential partner is inbred without administering a genetic test? Moths manage to do so with just a bit of a sniff. (To be clear: moths don't actually sniff. They do most of their olfaction with their antennae.) Apparently, inbred males produce less mating pheromone, making them less likely to even be noticed by a female.

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"We've apparently known for a while that disabilities are correlated with workplace violence and aggression"

I can appreciated that violence and aggression may result in disability to the recipient party, but not sure how it works vice versa.

Nevertheless, I've not a clue how that part of the article has relevance to a link which leads me to a Science Direct article entitled, "Successful aging through digital games: Socioemotional differences between older adult gamers and Non-gamers"

I see that the research was done in London, which is probably a good idea.

If it had been conducted in Beijing everyone would prefer "very large", since "medium" would be almost the same as "none".

Edit: Really don't need to downvote me, I'm Chinese and this is completely out of humor. I also wanted to point out that the people of London is not a good sample for men in general. You'd need a study in 15 or 20 cities with men of all age tiers to get a good average.

At least in that group, medium breasts come out on top, as it were. Although, combined, the fans of "large" and "very large" categories added up to an even greater percentage of the survey population.

"Further analyses showed that men’s preferences for larger female breasts were significantly associated with a greater tendency to be benevolently sexist, to objectify women, and to be hostile towards women."

Eh! I wouldn't trust any conclusions from this sort of survey. People would be inclined to give joke answers simply because it's that kind of topic.

Favoring a specific type of breast is about as sexist as women caring about a specific shape and size of penis. AKA it's not sexist at all. how about you think for a bit before jumping on the PC bandwagon.

Nevertheless, I've not a clue how that part of the article has relevance to a link which leads me to a Science Direct article entitled, "Successful aging through digital games: Socioemotional differences between older adult gamers and Non-gamers"

Dr Timmer, can you shed some light on this?

Yep - was a different paper i was considering for inclusion (maybe next week). I've gone through my history and found the right one. Link should work now.

It's essentially the view that you are fond of the opposite sex, but still apply some pre-conceived notion about what stereotype they should fill (i.e. women are weak, men are strong). Benevolent sexism is a real term. You will have no problem finding google results if you want to do more reading.http://www.google.com/search?q=benevolent+sexism

As a deaf guy working in various jobs in the UK, I haven't had too bad a time personally, but I am aware of a lot of disabled people who have frankly had a shitty time - some have worked in same job for 10 years without promotion etc. People like outreach workers, postmen, graphic designers, etc, all deaf, plugging away at the same job, seeing new hires being promoted above them, getting brushed off by management if they request sign language interpreters for workplace meetings and so on. For me as a deaf person, the worst thing was workplace exclusion - not being part of the social side, gossip, networking, workfloor jokes, ad-hoc meetings, chats down the pub and so on.

There's a reason why many disabled people choose to set up their own companies - a higher percentage do so than non-disabled people. Yet many of the government support systems for disabled people in work are based on the concept that disabled people work under a boss - things like self-employment, flexible hours, filing paperwork online and so on tend to be remarkably difficult to integrate.

I'd be interested to find out about the treatment of the disabled workforce in America. We've had a pretty strong disabled movement that has made its mark on the national legislature, so I'd be curious to see what impact that would have on the treatment of individuals in the work force.

"We've apparently known for a while that disabilities are correlated with workplace violence and aggression"

I can appreciated that violence and aggression may result in disability to the recipient party, but not sure how it works vice versa.

I took that to mean that a person with violent and aggressive tendencies would be more likely to suffer injuries resulting in handicap as a result of those tendencies - unsafe driving or operation of other machinery, fights resulting in serious injury (shootings/stabbings/etc.),and so on. And that the injured person would continue to be a bastard after the injury and continue to be involved in elevated levels of violence and aggression thus raising the proportion of disabled involved in such circumstances. The study discussed in the Ars article refutes that hypothesis.

Edit: Would those of you voting this post down post as to why? I don't care about the down votes but am curious as to your interpretation of the quoted sentence. What do you take it to mean?

Favoring a specific type of breast is about as sexist as women caring about a specific shape and size of penis. AKA it's not sexist at all. how about you think for a bit before jumping on the PC bandwagon.

who said it was? haven't seen any comments hinting it was, and the research obviously didn´t either, as there was not a 100% correlation..

It's essentially the view that you are fond of the opposite sex, but still apply some pre-conceived notion about what stereotype they should fill (i.e. women are weak, men are strong). Benevolent sexism is a real term. You will have no problem finding google results if you want to do more reading.http://www.google.com/search?q=benevolent+sexism

Yeah, it's a term created by insecure women who think that every time some man tries to do something nice for them (regardless of whether they would do it for a man as well or not) it diminishes their "agency". It really has more to do with the women than the men.

Women's Liberation was an enormous step forward for women and the process of achieving equal opportunity is unfinished. Academic feminism, not so much. It's very existence for the most part depends on finding fault.

The point of diminishing returns was reached about twenty years ago. That's why more and more women refuse to call themselves feminists. It's not because of "false consciousness" or stupidity or naivety. It's because the line between legitimate complaint and whining has been crossed.

Not only that, feminism has crossed the line between liberation and oppression. If a woman doesn't live up to the feminist ideal of having a career outside of the house, etc, then somehow there is something wrong with that woman. Just as back in the 50's there was something wrong with women that wanted a career outside of the house.

>>what breast size do men prefer<<Tsst, tsst, that's discriminatory, John.Should read "heterosexual men" instead of "men", I have zero interest in women's breast or their size as a man. I might have as a breast-feeding infant though.

>>what breast size do men prefer<<Tsst, tsst, that's discriminatory, John.Should read "heterosexual men" instead of "men", I have zero interest in women's breast or their size as a man. I might have as a breast-feeding infant though.

For the guys taking shots at feminism: Statistic after statistic... study after study... supports the idea that feminism academic or otherwise is still relevant. Pay discrimination, glass ceilings, sexual harassment, etc.

I'm a guy working in a university, and I'm consistently seeing men get away with sexual harassment in the work place, hearing stories of sexual assault on campus, and witnessing sexist bullsh*t from an old boys of club on campus. Right... it's nothing but women complaining for the sake of complaining. Nevermind the male privilege that consistently allows men to get away with this abuse.

For the guys taking shots at feminism: Statistic after statistic... study after study... supports the idea that feminism academic or otherwise is still relevant. Pay discrimination, glass ceilings, sexual harassment, etc.

I'm a guy working in a university, and I'm consistently seeing men get away with sexual harassment in the work place, hearing stories of sexual assault on campus, and witnessing sexist bullsh*t from an old boys of club on campus. Right... it's nothing but women complaining for the sake of complaining. Nevermind the male privilege that consistently allows men to get away with this abuse.

Sure. But academic feminism has done nothing to change anything. It was women in the streets protesting that made real changes. Academic feminism has a parasitic relationship to that movement. If anything academic feminism has undermined that movement.

Even if I'm wrong the perception I've described is the prevailing one. You can make whatever excuses you like (e.g. that's merely a demonstration of the backlash against feminism [Susan Faludi] or the persistence of systemic sexism [Judith Butler and Naomi Wolf], etc, blah, blah) but it's still a perception problem.

Not mentioned in the abstract of study of women's breasts: BMI. It is entirely plausible that the observed results occur due to men preferring large breasts over smaller ones while simultaneously preferring thin women over fat ones.

Not mentioned in the abstract of study of women's breasts: BMI. It is entirely plausible that the observed results occur due to men preferring large breasts over smaller ones while simultaneously preferring thin women over fat ones.

They used 3D models instead of pictures of actual women. The only difference between them was the breast size. They literally moved a slider from "small" to "large".

It's essentially the view that you are fond of the opposite sex, but still apply some pre-conceived notion about what stereotype they should fill (i.e. women are weak, men are strong). Benevolent sexism is a real term. You will have no problem finding google results if you want to do more reading.http://www.google.com/search?q=benevolent+sexism

It is essentially 50% if all men, 90% of all women, and 100% of all feminists. They believe the sexes are different but either think women are better, or are inconsistent and just believe women deserve to be treated better than men.

...It is essentially 50% if all men, 90% of all women, and 100% of all feminists. They believe the sexes are different but either think women are better, or are inconsistent and just believe women deserve to be treated better than men.

I'm a feminist, male, and disagree entirely with your analysis of benevolent sexism. Look up pay statistics and violence statistics.

So many commenters here haven't done their homework - I'll give you all a few things you can verify in Google.

1 in 3 women living in the United States will face sexual assault in their lifetime.

A benevolent sexist reacts to this by saying 'protect the women'.

A feminist asks if this number makes 1 in 3 men sex offenders if they're being non-diplomatic. The diplomatic question is: "Why can't men control themselves?" The offensive response to someone preaching sexism is 'jail the men'.

Googling '1 in 3 women' is very enlightening. There are plenty of statistics men just don't live with.

I'd love to say the dude talking about academic sexism was right because I'm fighting for acceptance into universities and am trying to get funding - but I'm a computer science major who's seen something a bit telling. In the four 2nd year programming classes I took, there were less than five women. I remember three. I went to a community college with over 20,000 students. Even though I'm in Oklahoma (which incarcerates women at a higher rate than any other state or any other first world nation), I seriously expected different.

Also, statistically there's pay inequity for women in academia.

It's not an "Well my opinion is women don't face..." or an "My friend's on the police force and he sees..." thing. It's empirical, it's numerical, it's damn sure not anecdotal: Women deal with more shit than men.